


A hypochondriac and a hypoglycemic jackass walk into a bar

by shassie



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Beverly Marsh is a saint, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier-centric, I love them all so much kill me, M/M, Richie is hypoglycemic and doesn't tell anyone because he's a fucking idiot, Stan and Bill are secretly a thing but it only really gets mentioned in like one sentence sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 14:36:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12367854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shassie/pseuds/shassie
Summary: Right now Eddie’s got this tiny fruit cup he’s threatening to crush in one hand, and Richie’s about two mouthfuls away from fully figuring out what kind of fruit is in it. Currently he’s caught between mandarin and grapefruit.





	A hypochondriac and a hypoglycemic jackass walk into a bar

**Author's Note:**

> My first Loser's Club fic, they're all high school Juniors in this. I hope you like it, and if you're reading my Stolovan fic, that's still in the works it hasn't died I swear, I'm just planning things out still, I'm just a small junior myself, but I got you, I prom! (half a promise) ((Tiffany Pollard is my everything))

He’s got hypoglycemia, Richie learns halfway into second term of Junior year.

Right now Eddie’s got this tiny fruit cup he’s threatening to crush in one hand, and Richie’s about two mouthfuls away from fully figuring out what kind of fruit is in it. Currently he’s caught between mandarin and grapefruit.

He wonders for a second if guessing right would impress Eddie enough to earn himself a couple of quick kisses behind the nurse’s back.

But no, Eddie looks reasonably infuriated, and decidedly not in the mood for sucking face. His brows are all twisted up and his glossy wide eyes are all fixated on the kitten poster on the far end of the wall. His nose is doing that scrunchy thing Richie likes to poke fun at but he figures that it’s not the right time to be doing anything of the sort.

Richie snorts then because he realizes that Eddie’s making the face he makes when he gets a shitty test score and is stuck trying to figure out how to approach the teacher about it.

“This isn’t funny.” Eddie snaps.

“I mean it kind of is.” Richie interjects. By the third spoonful he’s grinning with triumph and beaming, “Grapefruit!”

Eddie almost smiles just then, but instead he bites his lip and scrunches his up nose again like even the idea of entertaining Richie’s antics right now repulses him. Fair enough.

Eddie’s between his legs right now, and Richie’s more tempted than ever to just pull him even closer from where he’s perched up on the school nurse’s offices’ crummy examination table. It’s making his ass cold but Eddie standing almost a head shorter feeding him fruits and making angry eyes at the anatomy posters behind him is making his heart soar like crazy.

 

 

 

He’s finding it hard to distinguish whether it’s the low blood sugar making him dizzy right now, or just the warmth of Eddie’s tiny torso sitting snug between the torn up knees of his jeans.

He’d take a chance at slipping a discreet arm around Eddie’s waist if his hands weren’t shaking so bad. He knows it would just freak Eddie out.

His clunky glasses keep edging further down the bridge of his nose the longer they wait for the nurse to come back with an ice pack and a packet of saltine crackers she promised him.

In highsight, Richie thinks, he wouldn’t exactly classify any of this as being his ‘fault’, per say. He’s always been energetic and a little fatigued, and that had never been an issue for him, up until around a few week ago, when he started getting really fucking thirsty and slow and tired and groggy and generally more of a mess than usual.

Admittedly Richie’s just been finding excuses.

He reassures Eddie that he’s only dizzy because Mike’s boring study group lasted three hours this time around instead of just two - not because he’s starving just a few hours after lunch.

He tells everyone that he’s only leaning on Bev’s shoulder so much because Stan woke him up for church at the ass crack of dawn with Bill at his heels - not because Beverly has a sixth sense about this kind of shit and holds his trembling hands so that they’re out of Eddie’s line of sight like the gorgeous god-send that she is.

And of course his go-to excuse for why he’s so weak in the knees most mornings is that he spent the sweet early hours of dawn chucking increasingly heavy rocks at Eddie’s bed-side window and stage-whispering ‘Rapunzel! Let down your hair!’ until he gave in and let him inside - not because he skipped breakfast.

It’s easy to blame everything on that kind of stuff. It’s the kind of shit that tends to wear a guy out, everyone knows that.

But then he starts getting these god-awful headaches that just won’t fucking let him concentrate, and suddenly he can’t stand up without paling and needing to support himself. He’s never been able to focus much during trigonometry anyway, but lately it seems like every exponent might as well be a different language. At lunch he stops caring whether or not kids are staring and lets himself rest his pounding head in the space between Mike’s neck and broad shoulders, and he lets himself pretend it’s Eddie’s hand carding through his hair when really it’s Beverly’s.

Even Stan starts letting up, he smiles weakly at Richie’s low-par mom jokes and lets him have at the last few sips of his apple juice and backup trail mix because he knows how hungry Richie’s gotten in the past few weeks. Ben keeps assuring him it’s the sign of a growth spurt, but Richie’s sure it isn’t.

Eddie doesn’t much like being near sick people, that much is already established.

Richie figures if he keeps up the rouse that he’s fine and that everything he’s experiencing isn’t wearing him out the way it clearly is, then maybe he and Eddie can keep sucking face at odd hours, and maybe he can keep taking Eddie out to see whatever movie he wants at drive-ins, and maybe he won’t have to lie his ass off whenever Eddie shakes him into alertness after he’s spaced out for more than ten minutes.

Everything’s going fine, he handles the headaches, he handles how fucking tired he feels, he handles the body aches in the mornings and the hunger pangs at night and pretends he’s only letting Eddie run circles around him during gym to up his morale (honestly that kid can run circles around him any day, he’s ten times fitter than his physique let’s on).

He handles all of it with poise and grace and everything in between right up until everything gets fuzzy in the hallway on his way to fourth period, and suddenly it feels like the ground’s slipped right from underneath him and the next thing he knows he’s face-down on the floor and shaking, and by the time he fully comes-to, Bill’s hauling his limp ass to the nurse with a hyperventilating hypochondriac in-toe, and all Richie really knows is that his body’s sore as all hell. He guesses fainting and coming close to having a full-on seizure can do that to a guy.

Skip forward twenty minutes and here he is, with Eddie tight-lipped and crushing up a packet of ice until it’s cold like it should be. He meets Richie’s eyes and asks, voice going soft in worry in spite of how pissed and he looks, “Where does it hurt?”

He actually has to think about that for a beat because his legs ache like a truck ran them over, and his shoulder feels like it got locked out of place and rammed back into its socket a couple of times in succession, synopsis: everything fucking hurts, but he settles on having Eddie hold the packet against his neck because that hurts like a motherfucker too, plus Eds has to tip-toe to reach him and if that isn’t the most endearing thing he doesn’t know what is.

Bill’s giving Richie’s contact information at the front desk and trying to reach his mom for him.

In light of everything that’s happened, a huge part of Richie is just relieved that he doesn’t have to pretend he’s okay anymore.

Eddie calls him an idiot right up until before his mom picks him up, and after school every one pays Richie a visit to do the same. It’s only until Ben takes out a few books he’s been excited about and Mike pours over them when things stop being about how much of an idiot Richie is.

Beverly and Stan start talking about the movie posters popping up on the streets, and Eddie tucks himself into the careful space between the rocky bed frame and the solidity of Richie’s sore back and starts gently kneading at his shoulders until Richie’s babbling dies down in his throat and he relaxes himself. He leans back until Eddie’s mouth is flush against the shell of his ear, where he breaks their shared silence and whispers, “You ever hide shit like this from me again, you’re a dead man, Tozier, you hear?”

And then softer, he adds, “You don’t always have to pretend that you’re okay when you’re not, Richie. We love you, I love you, and hypoglycemia is a serious condition. Do you know how many people die with that condition just because they decided to skip breakfast? Do you know how much of an idiot you have to be to die via low blood sugar? I’ve got a huge stock of granola at my place, you ass, the next time I catch you hiding shit, I’m shoving an entire box of cereal down you throat,”, then, after a second, “Jesus, I’m threatening you with snacks.”

And Richie has no choice but to smile at that.


End file.
